3.1- The Three Estates
Revolutions
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French Revolution's Two Estates
- Historian George Lefebvre argues that pre-revolutionary French society wasn't truly divided into three estates.
- The First Estate (the Church) mirrored the broader societal structure, with top positions filled by nobility and lower clergy drawn from the Third Estate.
- This makes the Church a microcosm of the existing class divisions rather than a separate entity.
- The real division lay between the privileged (nobility and high-ranking clergy) and the commoners (Third Estate and lower clergy).
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